


Feelings in the Background

by NorroenDyrd



Series: Should Never Have Existed [23]
Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Bisexual Blackwall (Dragon Age), Dorks in Love, F/M, Facial Shaving, Fluff, Heart-to-Heart, Light Angst, M/M, Slice of Life, Sweet Zevran Arainai, Zevran Arainai in Dragon Age: Inquisition
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-09-10
Updated: 2018-09-10
Packaged: 2019-06-29 14:44:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 1,679
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15731553
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NorroenDyrd/pseuds/NorroenDyrd
Summary: Some sketches of minor background relationships (Dorian and Zevran; Felix and Bethany; and Blackwall and Jowan; perhaps more will be added later) that sometimes come up in one of my big Dragon Age fic projects and deserve some spotlight of their own.





	1. Moon's Gaze

The speckled yellow eye of the moon makes a slow, clouded blink, and for a few minutes, the courtyard goes dark. In the gallery where they have found a bench for themselves, the shadows are densest, a tidal wave of ink streaming in and splashing against the stone walls. Bethany cannot bear drowning in this stifling torrent, so she lifts her hand to eye level, nursing a tiny, glass-like ball of blue light, which dilutes the ink with its pale splash just enough for her to make out Felix’s face, looking up at her out of the jet-black nothingness. Eyes enormous and glimmering against the spell-touched bluish white of his skin (it’s just the lighting, really; he has not actually looked this sickly for the longest time), and brow furrowed with concern.

Even though her throat is still being stabbed by that thorny dryness from their previous conversation, Bethany attempts a smile.

‘Thank you for doing this, Felix. For… sitting like this, out here with me’.

‘I am just trying to be there for you,’ he replies softly. 'I know I wouldn’t want to be alone on the anniversary of my… my mother’s…’

He cuts himself short, choked by a lump that it takes a long time, and a huge gulping breath, to swallow. Bethany nods, and muses in a half-hushed voice after Felix is done struggling for breath,

'I am sure he is thinking about her… Roy, I mean… Out there, wherever he is… Trying to save the world together with your father…’

Her thread of thought also snaps, and she has to shrink her head into her shoulders, suddenly feeling so small and cold amidst the black torrents of night.

'Felix?’ she pipes up unexpectedly, her voice childishly thin, and faltering towards the end, as if her question mark balances over the edge of the precipice. 'Can you… hold my hand?’

He makes an incoherent anxious noise and hurries to lace her fingers through hers. His touch is warm, and that warmth pulls Bethany in, closer and closer, until, without even properly registering how it happened, she finds herself resting against his chest, her eyes fluttering shut and her chest now rising and falling much more freely.

The clouds part, like the lead-heavy eyelids of a waking giant, and the moon gazes bleary down at two lonesome, tightly hugging children, both of whom have known the pain of losing a mother, and the fear of facing a mad blood mage ready to do anything to bring a loved one back.


	2. Beautiful Thing

Out of all the Inquisition agents sent out to explore these desert ruins, Zevran is the only one whom Alistair knows personally - so, quite in spite of himself, he kind of… gravitates towards him, edging closer on the rock where he has perched himself, hands clasped between his knees. Once he has settled down, with some shuffling and awkward throat-clearing, Alistair mimicks Zevran’s pose, interlacing his fingers and throwing back his head to take in the shimmering starry expanse above, with his eyes reflecting the milky aura of the constellations that are scattered above the pulsing greenish-yellow horizon (not as strongly as Zevran’s, but still enough to probably make them look like a couple of spooks in the dusk).  
  
For a moment, it almost feels like they are back in the Fereldan wilds again, ambling about, stopping the Blight, exchanging witty banter… Except that Zevran seems very low on banter tonight.  
  
That is… unlike him, and even though Alistair would have clapped his hands over his ears with a ‘Lalala’ of denial the moment the Antivan started teasing him, his silence feels far more wrong.  
  
'You… um… You are awfully serious tonight,’ Alistair begins, preceding his words with the tiniest (and, uh, awkwardest) of laughs.  
  
Zevran starts, and his lips make an odd twitching motion. As if he is trying to laugh back (or at the very least smile) but not quite managing it.  
  
'That is an unpardonable crime on my part, and I do apologize,’ he says, and his voice almost sounds like that banter Alistair has been thinking about (and, weirdly enough, missing, embarrassing as it can get). But still… Still not quite there. Still wrong.  
  
'Did something happen?’ Alistair dares to cautiously probe him, after making a small pause and clearing his throat again, for what must be the dozenth time (well, at least he can write that part off to the pesky little sand grains getting everywhere).  
  
'Do you need… er… a second for a duel maybe? Because I can stand there for a bit, looking very stupid. But well-meaning’.  
  
As his mouth gets away from him (again!), Alistair begins instinctively scanning the skyline for a sand storm, so it might pour even more pesky grains over the both of them, turning them into mounds with blinking glowing eyes and thus putting an end to the whole disaster. But what do you know… His babbling appears to have actually put Zevran at ease.  
  
'I may take you up on this offer, my friend, but not this time,’ he chuckles. Mirthlessly. Darn it.  
  
'Not this time… No, I had a rather puzzling conversation before we left Skyhold. With the good Lord Felix, who had some words to share with me… On Dorian’.  
  
Alistair blinks rapidly, astounded.  
  
It is hardly a secret that Zevran and the more… Zevran-like of the two Tevinters that Alistair became chummy (more or less) with in Redcliffe have been doing the doodly-do (as Alistair blurted out once, instantly almost smothering himself with his own blush). And where there is doodly-do, it is not hard to guess what kind of words one doodly-doer’s friend might say to the other.  
  
'Felix… Had the Talk with you?’ he says, using all of his breath to emphasize just how big that capital T is supposed to be. 'Like Stabbity with me about Josephine? He… doesn’t seem the type. His father maybe, but not Felix…’  
  
'Oh, there were no threats exchanged, veiled or otherwise,’ Zevran says, a subtle sadness tinting his words despite the attempt at snark.  
  
'He was most gracious, in fact… All he said to me was… “If you truly care about him, please let him know”…’  
  
'Oh,’ Alistair squeaks out. Such frankness, especially coming from someone like Zevran, who will sing you a dozen dirty Antivan ballads to avoid honestly saying how he feels, is somehow… Quite humbling. Like the second moon has suddenly decided to show itself - and to him alone. Of all people.  
  
'And do you… Care about him?’ he adds after a while, feeling a strong impulse to respectfully lower his voice.  
  
Zevran glances at the sky again - and to continue with the second-moon wonders, his eyes grow enormously wide and filled with a tenderness Alistair would never expect to see from him.  
  
'It would have been… A beautiful thing to care about him, my friend. He is a wonderful man, and he deserves being cared about, the way fate has always denied him. But…’  
  
He turns to face Alistair abruptly, his serene dreamy mask shattering into shards of pain.  
  
'But what if the man who is destined to care about him is still out there, and I am but a stepping stone to him? As I have always been… I may be… May be in too deep for that not to hurt should it prove true…’  
  
Zevran cuts himself short with a low, bitter laugh.  
  
'I have forgotten the tenets the Crows taught me. Do not get attached’.  
  
'You are not a Crow any more, though,’ Alistair points out. As a… ummm… reminder for Zevran not to stab him if he attempts a hug. Not that he would do something like that but… Just in case.  
  
'Wise words,’ Zevran murmurs to himself - and, unexpectedly, hugs Alistair first.


	3. New Face

‘Are you certain?’ Thom asks, peering into the eyes of the mage he came to know - to seek out, to miss, to ridiculously fret over, to love - as Levyn.  
  
An elusive apostate from Witchwood, almost a whispered legend among the poor bastards trying to survive outside their shattered Circles; a ragged figure in the corner of their eye, stealing back the blankets they borrowed for the refugees from the runaway mages’ caches. Levyn was the name he gave them when that little… misunderstanding was resolved, and he offered to join the Inquisition. Levyn was the name he served under - much like Blackwall - loyal, well-intentioned, with his head full of giddy thoughts about, for the first time since an eternity of solitude, being a part of something big. Something noble. Something that will shield the whole world from evil.  
  
No wonder that the two of them clicked so well. And no wonder that, after that night in the barn, all breathless kisses and muffled outcries and clinging desperately on to each other as if they were both being carried off by a crushing torrent neither could fight, they were struck by the same thought. To stand up. To come forward. To cast off the old masks and let the world see the face of the lawless mercenary who allowed his soldiers to spill innocent blood, and the frightened blood mage who had been pushed towards unleashing a disaster on the town of Redcliffe.  
  
'I am certain, yes,’ Levyn - or rather, Jowan - says with a small smile. 'I… I have never been as good as you at wearing a beard’.  
  
'Poor Sera - how is she going to make jokes about us now?’ Thom chuckles, as he begins to whip up the lather with a horse-hair brush he borrowed from Master Dennet.  
  
Jowan swallows and meets Thom’s gaze, eyes huge and swimming with enormous tearful sparkles.  
  
'There… There is still going to be an us? After… everything?’ he asks in a small voice.  
  
'The Inquisitor has pardoned us,’ Thom reminds him, quietly and in a soft, comforting tone, planting a small kiss on the scruffy cheek he is about to shave. 'Allowed us to live as our true selves. And there ever was anything true about me… It was how I felt about you’.


End file.
